Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Well you have to make hay when the
sun shines, or rather make giant snowballs when the snow is sticking together.
This afternoon, as the snow melted and became quite sticky, the kids were
obsessed with making a big ball. I think it was Connor’s influence; suddenly
everything has to be bigger and better. Brooke started the fun and I couldn't
resist joining, hey I too like bigger and better, and that’s all I’m saying.
I’m an American now :)

It was a beautiful evening, sunny,
clear blue skies, nice day for pictures, although it's hard to get the exposure
right with snow (all these photos were taken with -2/3 exposure compensation).

Gran, Lynne’s Mum, is back visiting
us again for a couple of weeks. We had hoped for slightly better
weather, more Spring-like so that she could enjoy being out in the garden, but not so thus far. Welcome back again Gran, great to have
you here again. Enjoy your stay. Thanks for collecting her yesterday Randy and Brooke for the nice art project with the kids.

Monday, March 25, 2013

My pleas for Spring two days ago were
rewarded with about a foot of snow in West Lafayette last night. Roads were
closed, all the schools were shut and it was a day to stay at home and drive
everybody crazy.

We went sledding this afternoon which
expending some energy and then Brooke filled them up with hot chocolate for the
afternoon. So my question remains, where is Spring?

Sunday, March 24, 2013

We're all starting to get a little desperate for Spring here in West Lafayette. Every couple of days we're teased with some sunshine and a few warm rays only to be quickly thrown back into freezing temperatures again. Yesterday was pretty typical. Steef and Ginette came over with their girls and we all played outside for a few hours, albeit whilst well wrapped up in warm jackets. I even dragged the grill and a few deck chairs out from the garage and dusted their cobwebs. We threw on a few steaks, beef and tuna, and formally announced grilling season to have finally arrived. Yippeee....All of this jubilation was merely met with a bitterly cold and snowy morning....when will Spring arrive? Trying hard to utter these sentiments without some profanity, this weather is now officially getting old.....

Sunday, March 17, 2013

We had a very relaxing end to a
seemingly very busy weekend. In honor of St Patrick’s Day, Lynne cooked an
Irish Stew. It tasted wonderful and very authentic. I should know, we had it
countless times as children growing up in Ireland. Very fond memories indeed.
We shared this meal with Randy and Lorraine, and Kay who is visiting Indiana
for a couple of weeks.

Hope everyone has a great week, I’ll
be back with an update later this week but for now it’s time for bed, Monday is
rapidly approaching.

With my St. Patrick’s Day post, I’m back
blogging again. It happens every time, as we approach a set of final exams, the
poor blog gets ignored.

Yesterday we ended the third quarter
of my MBA at Booth with a brutally long Corporate Finance final exam. It’s all
over now though for three weeks and my classmates are once again scattered with
the wind to every part of the world. Giving a shout out to Andy who is now in
London, Julien in Shanghai, Joe in Sonoma and the many who are still in
Chicago, perhaps feeling sorry for themselves as they recover from the
celebrations last night. See you all again soon.

Picture credit to Anya for the class photo and the photos taken yesterday from the university building of
the Chicago river looking very festive for St Patrick’s day.

To my family and friends around the
world, Happy St Patrick’s Day. There are so many great reasons to celebrate today;
everybody has their own specific motives. Yet for many Irish people who live
around the world, who are often quite reserved about actually being Irish,
myself included, their own internal celebration is often a little more mooted
than the rather more brash celebrations of others. Yet we do celebrate. I personally celebrate with much quiet thought
about what it means to be Irish and the affirmation of how proud we are as a
people. How our individual and collective accomplishments are respected around
the world. As for celebrating like all others do, well, as you know, we Irish
do enough of that throughout the year. Hope you all have a wonderful day.

Shown below are the customary photos
of the kids in their Irish attire which Granny Owens sent a few weeks ago.

Our Family

August 2015 (click to enlarge)

About Us

Welcome to our Family Blog.

My name is Paul Owens, I'll be the one leaving most of the posts and beside me in the picture are Lynne, Anja, Isabel & Connor.

I originally come from Roscommon, a small town in the West of Ireland and Lynne comes from London. We met while studying together in the UK but soon after getting married in Zimbabwe we moved to Sweden, where we stayed for 5 years.

We now live in West Lafayette, Indiana where we have been for 13 years and where we had Anja who is ten, Isabel who is eight and Connor who is six.